Sticky Lips
by ryttu3k
Summary: What is it about red lips?


**Author's note:** Hello I am trash. This is solely the fault of a Tumblr post that asked you to imagine your favourite character (okay, that would be Sycamore), then to imagine them in tight jeans, a crop top, and lipstick, and then a drawing happened, and then writing happened, and I'm terribly sorry. Also inspired by Michael by Franz Ferdinand.

* * *

When Lysandre awakened on Monday morning with mussed hair, disheveled clothes, and a magnificent hangover, his first thought was that he probably shouldn't have gone clubbing the night before he was due to start his doctorate.

His second thought was a vague memory of the night before, of loud music and warm bodies, of narrow hips and dark curls and sticky lips, and a grin quirked the corners of his mouth. You were only in your early twenties, rich, gorgeous, and with no responsibilities whatsoever once in your life, he reasoned, and Lysandre had made the best of it before taking on the heavy load that was a doctoral studies. Who said he couldn't have one last night of freedom before diving in?

Rising from the bed, dragging off last night's tight black shirt, he tossed it in the direction of the hamper. A hot shower, a lot of coffee, and something greasy would cut through the headache, and he glanced blearily at his phone to check how much time he still had.

Ah - there was a souvenir from the night before, apparently, beneath it. A napkin, folded carefully and with a phone number scrawled on it - but with the mark of cherry red lipstick pressed into the paper as a kiss from afar.

Lysandre's brow furrowed. Lipstick?

Narrow hips and dark curls and sticky lips. His hand tightened on the night stand for a moment as the impressions crystallised into memory, and he glanced down at the lipstick mark and grinned again.

Well, he had had stranger hook-ups.

Stripping off the remainder of his rumpled clothes, he padded barefoot into the bathroom, the little room filling with steam as he started the shower up. Stepping beneath the spray, he tilted his head back and let the memories filter back.

It had been dark, dark and warm and closed in with the press and swell of bodies around him, with the bass driving through him and reverberating down to his bones. He had been dancing, a sheen on his arms and face from the heat of the crowd around him, and he had retreated to the bar for something cold, to cool down the fire threatening to burn him.

And _he_ had been there, all cherry red lips and smudged eyeliner and dark curls, and oh, he didn't usually go for the kind of boys that wore make-up but the sight of that red mouth with a drop of vodka still resting on the bottom lip was sending a pulse of heat due south, the urge to stride forward and lick the drop off himself so strong he had to cling to the bar to stop himself.

The boy - no, man, he was probably closer to his age, perhaps a couple of years older - looked up sharply at the scrutiny. His eyes, Lysandre had noted, were a warm grey. They held his gaze steadily, coolly, for an indeterminable long moment, and then those red-painted lips curled up in a smile.

In the shower, Lysandre scrubbed his hands through his hair and grinned at the memory. No, he didn't usually go for make-up, but sometimes even he had exceptions. What was it about red?

They had met on the dance floor, Lysandre caught by an invisible leash, tethered to him by red and grey. And the music had moved through them, the music and his body, cherry red lips suddenly much closer, distracting him from narrow hips and clever hands.

Lysandre had reached out boldly, tracing the strip of warm olive skin between the too-short white sleeveless shirt and the obscenely tight grey jeans, and the man had shuddered and pressed his body closer, grey eyes half-hidden behind his lids, and Lysandre had stopped bothering to care about how it looked to be grinding against a perfect stranger with very nice lipstick in the middle of a dance floor and simply gave in to sensation.

Those red lips had parted a little at the contact. Lysandre stared down at them hungrily and - well. Their bodies were close enough; the man was sure to realise what the images filling Lysandre's mind at the sight, the things he wanted to do to those lips, were doing to him.

He drew back, just enough to jerk his head in the direction of the door, raising a questioning eyebrow. Lysandre craved nicotine and warm skin, did not know which of the two he wanted first, did not particularly care either way so long as he got his twin fixes.

The red lips curved in a questioning frown, and then he shrugged, catching Lysandre's wrist and allowing himself to be led out of the club.

Hair hanging in his eyes, Lysandre blindly turned the water off and reached for his towel, scrubbing his hair dry. Coffee, he decided firmly as he wrapped the towel around his waist, he had to start the coffee, ease off the hangover.

At least it wasn't as bad as it could have been. He had had something else to get his fix that night.

"Cigarette?" Lysandre had asked as soon as they made their way into cool air and the music had faded enough to actually hold a conversation, fumbling for the pack and his lighter and glancing up just in time to see the man prop himself up against the wall and his tongue dart out to dampen his lips. He felt his own go dry, very suddenly.

"Please," the man said with feeling, and he had handed over a cigarette, nimble fingers snagging the lighter, the cigarette set between his red lips as the flame cast flickering highlights over his cupped hands, the angles of his nose and jaw, gleaming against the delicate curve of his mouth.

And Lysandre soaked in the view like a man starving, at the little flame illuminating the curl of his hair, the cigarette between his slightly parted lips, the faint red smudges already tarnishing the white paper; the curve of his fingers as he coaxed the flame, the contrast of white fabric and smooth olive skin, the sharp lines of his hips between the shirt and the jeans, the faint trail of hair dipping below the waistline.

A wisp of smoke rose through the air, and the lighter was being pressed back into his hand as the man took in a deep lungful and out again, smoke curling out between his lips.

"Earlier," he said suddenly as he caught hold of the cigarette and pulled it away from his lips, and Lysandre fumbled with his own cigarette. "Back on the dance floor - were you enjoying that?" There was the faintest of sly grins there, despite the nominally cheerfully curious tone; Lysandre gazed at him thoughtfully and watched the glowing tip of the cigarette reflected in those bright eyes.

"I was thinking," Lysandre had told him, his voice low, "Of all the things I want to do to your mouth."

That had certainly got a reaction, he recalled with a grin as he set the water to boil and wandered back to his room to dress for the day. It had got flushed cheeks and a catch in his breathing and raised eyebrows and - thank you, thank you, thank you Arceus - a bitten lower lip, and then slowly, deliberately, a grin in return.

They had said nothing more as they had finished their cigarettes, Lysandre stealing glimpses of red lips wrapped around the cigarette and imagining just what else they could be wrapped around, and no sooner had the other man ground the remains of the cigarette beneath his battered blue Converses did Lysandre pin him against the wall and press his mouth against sticky red lips.

There was an answering groan against him, long fingers tugging at his hair, narrow hips pressed against his and the tightness of his jeans not exactly doing much to hide precisely what his body was doing, and Lysandre bit down with possessive intent.

"Not here," the man managed as he drew away, grey eyes darting around the street and settling on one of the alleyways that riddled Lumiose City. "Come on."

And then it was Lysandre's turn to be slammed against a wall, to be kissed furiously, for his own fingers to twine through dark curls and to grasp and pull and follow as the man dropped to his knees, fingertips resting against Lysandre's hips, the infuriatingly cherry red lipstick now looking rather more smeared than immaculate.

"You said you were thinking about what you could do to my mouth, right?" he breathed, and yanked down the zipper of Lysandre's jeans.

Lysandre was now staring at those jeans thoughtfully before shaking his head and tossing them into the hamper. They probably weren't the most professional items he could have chosen for his first day as a doctoral student - selecting neat black slacks and a button-up red shirt almost the precise colour as the man's mouth had been, he set about dressing.

It had been a good night.

He made coffee; he made breakfast. He set the heavy laptop in its case and collected his wallet and phone. He glanced at the napkin with the phone number, with the kiss mark (a spare napkin in his pocket, a spare pen, a scrawled number and sealed with a kiss), glanced between it and the waste paper bin, and left it, very deliberately, on his night stand.

And he set off for the university.

It had been a good night, and he remembered it in flashes of sensory memory, of the back of a hand wiped across smudged lips, of his shaking fingers tearing open the condom packet, of legs wrapped around his waist and hands clinging to his shoulders and of kisses that tasted like cigarette smoke and alcohol and something sweetly intoxicating, of heat and narrow hips and grey eyes and dark curls and sticky lips that were red, red, red.

Maybe he would call him later.

By the time he reached the faculty, he was the picture of professionalism, last night's decadence set firmly aside to be fondly recalled later, his mind solely on the task of starting his doctorate, meeting with his supervisor and led on a guided tour of the department, and it wasn't until his supervisor was saying, "And this is one of our post-doctoral fellows, Doctor Augustine Sycamore," that Lysandre felt the bottom of his stomach drop out.

He barely heard his supervisor explain who he was and he was fairly sure that it was the same for Doctor Sycamore, too busy taking in grey eyes and dark curls and lips that were no longer sticky or red but parted in surprise and then caught between his teeth, a pink blush spreading over his skin, and Lysandre felt his own face burn.

"- and I'm sure you two will get on fine," his supervisor was saying, and he found himself nodding distractedly, barely noticing her moving on to the next person in the department.

"I'm sure," he echoed, trying not to look too hard at Doctor Sycamore's mouth, remembering just where those lips had been the night before.

"Oh, I'm sure," Doctor Sycamore repeated again with a sly, bemused smile, his gaze flickering once with deliberate intent over Lysandre's body. "You'd better go catch up," he added, popping the end of his pen between his parted lips, and Lysandre felt himself flushing as he hurried away.

He had the feeling this was going to be a most educational time.


End file.
